In works of
imagination we cannot expect to find criticism of this kind. Fourthly,
the monks, when attacked, were sometimes able to take a terrible
vengeance.
It is nevertheless true that the monks were the most unpopular class of
all, and that they were reckoned a living proof of the worthlessness of
conventual life, of the whole ecclesiastical organization, of the
system of dogma, and of religion altogether, according as men pleased,
rightly or wrongly, to draw their conclusions. We may also assume that
Italy retained a clearer recollection of the origin of the two great
mendicant orders than other countries, and had not forgotten that they
were the chief agents in the reaction against what is called the heresy
of the thirteenth century, that is to say, against an unruly and
vigorous movement of the modern Italian spirit. And that spiritual
police which was permanently entrusted to the Dominicans certainly
never excited any other feeling than secret hatred and contempt.
After reading the 'Decameron' and the novels of Franco Sacchetti, we
might imagine that the vocabulary of abuse directed at the monks and
nuns was exhausted. But towards the time of the Reformation this abuse
became still fiercer. To say nothing of Aretino, who in the
'Ragionamenti' uses conventual life merely as a pretext for giving free
play to his own poisonous nature, we may quote one author as typical of
the rest--Masuccio, in the first ten of his fifty novels.
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